Star Wars: Guardians of the Whills (Star Wars: Rogue One)

by Greg Rucka

  “Over thirty kids, how many adults?”

  Chirrut hesitated. Baze waited. They had no answer to this as yet. Neither Killi nor Kaya wanted to leave the other behind, but it was clear that at least one of them would be required to go with the orphans, if not both. Even with the CZ droid’s assistance, watching over that many children was a lot to ask of any adult. It was even more to ask of an adult who did not yet know where they might end up, nor who would care for the orphans when they arrived. And most of all, there was the very real question of whether whoever left with them would be coming back to Jedha at all.

  “At least two,” Chirrut said, finally.

  “Either of these two adults a pilot?”

  “No,” Baze said.

  “So you need a vessel to move—let’s just say, I’m guessing here, but given the way things are working in this city lately, we’ll round it up, okay?—forty people, mostly children. And you need a pilot to fly the thing. They bringing anything with them? Cargo?”

  “Only essentials, what they will be able to carry with them.”

  Denic scratched her nose, adjusted her goggles. “Well, that’s something, at least.”

  “What do you think?” Baze asked.

  “I think you’ll never get off the ground, that’s what I think,” she said. “The Imperials aren’t going to give that many refugees clearance to depart, not with the way the situation here has deteriorated. Over thirty orphans? That gets onto the HoloNet, that’s a public relations disaster for them, that gets attention in the Imperial Senate. You’ll never get off the ground.”

  “We were thinking we would do this without clearance to depart,” Chirrut said.

  “You’ll be shot from the skies before you leave the atmosphere. Anything big enough to move that many people, the TIEs will be all over it before you hit escape velocity. And that’s if the Star Destroyer decides it’s worth launching TIEs over. They could just as easily pick you off with any of their, how many…” She looked at her fingers, doing a quick count, then gave up. “There’s a lot of turbolasers, that’s how many. And quads. And heavy quads. And triples. All the guns, that’s what I’m saying. That’s if they want to shoot you. They might want to grab you instead, and then you’re dealing with something like ten different tractor beams.”

  “We did not expect it would be easy to accomplish,” Chirrut said. “But it is the only hope for these children.”

  “Yeah, Chirrut, you’re not listening to me. I didn’t say it wasn’t going to be easy. I’m telling you it’s next to impossible.”

  “Next to impossible.”

  “That’s what I just said.”

  “There is a space between ‘next to impossible’ and ‘impossible.’” Chirrut smiled at something only he knew was there. “That is where we will fit.”

  “This guy, you believe this guy?” Denic said to Baze.

  “Yes,” Baze said. “We will need a pilot.”

  Denic leaned back on the crate she’d perched upon, sucked on her lower lip for a moment, thinking. “You could try Barso. For enough credits he’d do it.”

  “Barso.”

  “Woan Barso. He’s got that old Unar-Con tug he uses to move cargo up to the orbiting freighters. I’ve heard he’ll take refugees up with him so they can stow away. That is, if the price is right.”

  “This is the Woan Barso who is always wearing that vac-suit?” Baze asked. “The filthy orange one? The one he never takes off?”

  “That’s him.”

  “Chirrut doesn’t trust him,” Baze said.

  “Why not?”

  “The vac-suit,” Chirrut said. “Woan Barso either does not trust his skills or does not trust his ship, and putting the lives of these children in such hands would be, I think you will agree, foolish.”

  Denic sucked on her lower lip again for a moment. “Well, yeah, when you put it like that.”

  “We had someone else in mind,” Baze said.

  “I’m all ears.”

  Chirrut pointed his staff at Denic.

  “You,” he said.

  The Morellian jumped in Baze’s hand, spitting out bolt after bolt, the coolant tank in his other knocking against his thigh. That he could control the weapon at all one-handed surprised Baze, but he hadn’t wanted to risk being spotted while mounting the tank onto his back, and so he had decided to risk it. He had always been a strong man, stronger in his youth, but it pleased him somewhat that, even now, he could manage the weapon and make it do as he wished.

  It did precisely as he wished. The bolts flew unerringly to target, and Baze worked left to right as he exited the cantina, sending stormtrooper after stormtrooper to the ground.

  Tenza and Wernad were right behind him, and they each moved precisely as planned. From beneath his cloak, Tenza produced his rifle in two segments, quickly snapped the barrel into place on the receiver, and brought it to his shoulder, covering the promenade to the left. Wernad raised the cut-down blast cannon in both hands, covering the right. Baze headed straight to the entrance of bay eighteen, turning at the last moment to use the wall beside the door as cover, where he crouched on his haunches and threw his dust shroud over his shoulder.

  “Clear left,” Tenza said.

  “Clear right,” Wernad said.

  “Hold,” Baze said, swinging the tank onto his back and activating the magnetic clamps that would hold it in place. From within the docking bay all of them could hear the commotion and confusion of the stormtroopers who had entered with the droids, reacting to the noise from outside. The shooting had been intense, but brief, and they were only beginning to react. The crackle of comms ran in a ripple, helmet to helmet on each fallen stormtrooper as their fellow troopers inside tried to reach them. Baze checked the charging gauge on the Morellian, got back to his feet.

  “Moving,” he said, and pivoted into the doorway, the weapon now in both hands, thumb slapping the actuator below the electroscope on the cannon, initiating the smart targeting. If anything, he was more accurate this time than before, the cannon steady in his hands. Four shots, and four more stormtroopers were down, but it took Baze a half dozen more bolts before both of the KX-series droids stopped moving.

  “Clear,” Baze said, and stepped out of the way to let Tenza and Wernad run past, heading for the Sentinel. He waited until they were on the ramp, was sure they were both aboard, before turning back to the doorway to wait for Chirrut and the children.

  “I cannot leave,” Killi Gimm said. She raised her hands, palms turned up, as if to indicate that the decision was beyond her control.

  Kaya looked to Baze for support, but Baze just shook his head. This wasn’t an argument he wanted a part of, and it was an argument that had been going on for a couple of weeks, now. It was an argument that had started immediately after he and Chirrut had proposed their plan to Killi and Kaya.

  Kaya switched her appeal to Chirrut, then seemed to realize doing so was pointless and went back to her sister.

  “You understand that staying here is killing you, right?” Kaya said.

  “I understand that the air here is hurting me,” Killi said. “Whether or not that will be what kills me remains to be seen.”

  “You can’t ask me to go alone, Killi.” Kaya’s voice tightened with strain, and Baze could hear the tears in it. “You can’t ask me to leave you like that.”

  Killi took her sister’s hands.

  “Would you two leave us alone for a little while, please?” she said.

  Chirrut rose without a word and made his way to the door. Baze followed, closing it behind them. They stood in the largest room of the house, and several of the children were present. For a moment Baze and Chirrut were the center of all attention, but it quickly passed, and the children went back to what they had been doing prior. Baze and Chirrut’s visits to the orphanage in the last several weeks had been so frequent that each of them had ceased to be a novelty.

  “Althin,” Baze said, and touched Chirrut’s shoulder lightly, orienting him to w
here the boy was sitting, alone.

  “He still does not speak to anyone,” Chirrut said.

  “You should talk to him.”

  Chirrut’s expression tightened for a moment. He shook his head. “I have long since exhausted those things I can say to him. He knows I am here.”

  “He is a child,” Baze said.

  “He is a child who lost his parents. The words of an old Guardian offer him little.”

  “Are you angry at him, or…?”

  “I am not angry at him.”

  Baze sighed heavily, leaned his shoulder against the wall. Through the closed door, he could hear Kaya’s voice rising, and the notes of emotion in it.

  “They will not see each other again,” Chirrut said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because Kaya is correct. Killi is dying. And Killi will not leave. This is her home, she is a Disciple of the Whills. Kaya is younger, healthier. She is intelligent, resourceful, compassionate. She has skills she can sell, she understands machines, droids. Wherever Kaya and the children end up, she will be able to find their way. If Killi were to accompany her, Kaya’s attention would be divided. As Killi’s condition grows worse—and it will grow worse, we both know it, even if she does leave Jedha—Kaya’s concern will grow. She will not be able to tend to her sister and the children at the same time. And the children must come first.”

  Baze just looked at him.

  “Why are you staring at me?”

  “That was remarkably cold.”

  Chirrut shook his head slightly, frowning. Baze tried to remember the last time he’d seen Chirrut happy.

  “Kaya will need someone else to help,” Baze said. “At least one other.”

  “She will have Denic. Denic will not be coming back, either.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I know.”

  “How?”

  Chirrut shrugged.

  “You are beginning,” Baze said, “to either worry me, or annoy me. I am not sure which.”

  “I suspect both.”

  The door opened, and Killi stepped out. Past her, Baze could see Kaya, sitting, her face in her hands, her elbows on her knees. Her body was shaking, but she made no sound as she wept.

  “Kaya will go,” Killi said. “I will stay.”

  Baze grunted.

  “Now,” Killi said. “How are we going to get all of these children aboard a stolen Imperial shuttle?”

  We are awash in emotion, every day, every moment.

  We are buffeted, we are confused, and sometimes,

  yes, we are consumed.

  When the pond is disturbed, we cannot see within.

  When the pond is still, we can see with clarity.

  In both instances, the water is still there.

  So too is the Force like the water,

  whether you see it clearly or not.

  —Dejammy Shallon, teacher and priestess of D’janis IV

  From Collected Poems, Prayers, and Meditations on the Force,

  Edited by Kozem Pel, Disciple of the Whills

  IT WAS, WITHOUT QUESTION, one of the strangest things the people of the Holy City had witnessed since the start of the Imperial occupation.

  It began in the midafternoon, and at first the only reactions were curiosity, perhaps amusement. The sight of thirty-four children, ages ranging from six standard years at the youngest to perhaps fourteen or fifteen at the oldest. Boys and girls, all manner of species—humans, Rodians, at least one Togruta, a Bith, a pair of Zabrak twins—all of them walking together. They formed not so much a column as a mass, making their way past the Division Wall and through the New Market and into the Old, and they walked without speaking. Only four adults were among them, and that was perhaps stranger still to the people who recognized them.

  There was Killi Gimm, known to many as a Disciple of the Whills, recognizable even with the respirator mask hiding her features, wearing the red robes of her order. She was a tall woman, and being surrounded on all sides by children only made her appear taller. Walking with her, holding her hand, was Kaya Gimm, her younger sister—shorter, dressed in the same blue mechanic jumpsuit she always seemed to wear, tool belt around her waist, a satchel slung over her shoulder, held in place with her free hand. Some observers, catching a better look at Kaya, thought that her eyes were tearing, most likely due to the dust in the air. The wind was strong that afternoon, blowing steadily with occasional sharp gusts across the mesa. The Imperial flags that had been raised over the Old Market snapped loudly in the breeze.

  Most of the people who saw the procession couldn’t identify the other woman in the group, taking up the rear. This was because a great many of the people who could identify her had been arrested over the last several weeks and were now far, far from Jedha, likely never to return; and those who had managed to evade the stormtroopers thus far, had they been asked, would have categorically denied knowing her. She wore a set of goggles over her eyes, with a shock of strikingly red hair that seemed to erupt from her scalp at all angles. She wore traveling clothes, a thick spacer’s jacket and pants and boots, and she had the holster for a blaster strapped to her thigh, but the holster itself was empty. She wore the clothes as if familiar in them, as if, perhaps, they had been all around the galaxy with her, and would be again.

  But it was the man leading the procession who earned the most curiosity, the most scrutiny. He was known to many, if not by name then by sight. He had, until recently, taken to spending much of his days in the Old Market, with an alms bowl in one hand and a well-worn and carefully crafted uneti-wood staff in the other. Some said he was blind. Others said that was just an act, an attempt to prey upon people’s good natures while he begged for money. Just watch him getting around, those same people said. If he’s blind, I’m the Emperor.

  A few claimed that he was a Guardian of the Whills, or had been before the Empire had sealed the Temple of the Kyber. Most dismissed this out of hand. The rumor was that the Guardians had all left Jedha when the Empire had arrived, and in fact there were many in the Holy City who resented this. They felt that, like the Jedi Knights before them, the Guardians had abandoned the people in their hour of need.

  Watching the man leading them, though, it was easy to believe that he could, indeed, see. He walked with purpose, without hesitation, the stick gently swaying bare centimeters above the ground in one hand, the hand of a young Rodian boy, perhaps no more than eight years old, in the other.

  They walked, and sometimes Killi Gimm would have to pause, and she could be heard coughing behind her respirator, and when that happened the entire procession paused for her. Her sister would hold Killi’s hand a little tighter. Then the fit would pass, and they would resume, and as they made their way through the Old Market and onto the Blessing Way, people began to follow them. A handful, at first, and then more and more, and more, none of them knowing where, precisely, they were going, nor what would happen when they got there. Following the man who might not have been blind at all.

  It was not, after all, unheard of to see a progression of pilgrims making their way through the Holy City. Before the Empire had come, it had been common for both the Beatifics and the followers of the Isopter to walk the city. But that had not happened in years, and never could anyone remember the procession being made up almost entirely of children.

  The stormtroopers noticed this, of course, and began relaying reports back to their command posts, comlinks crackling with messages ranging from bemusement to confusion. Should they be responding? What would they be responding to? How? Yes, one sergeant pointed out that technically, this was an illegal gathering. The Empire had decreed that no large groups were allowed to congregate in the Holy City until the current crisis with the partisans—whom they called terrorists—was resolved. But these were children , and none of them was armed as best as anyone could tell, and what were they going to arrest them for? If the procession had been making toward one of the command posts, or one of the designated LZs, that would have
been different. Even walking to one of the old temples, certainly, their orders would have been clear, they’d have known how to respond.

  But these children were just walking, following the maybe-not-so-blind man on some strange, circuitous route through the city.

  By the time the procession reached the Square of Stars, they had over fifty people trailing along behind them. When they left the Blessing Way the number had easily doubled, and by the time they turned onto Pilgrim’s Walk, there were over two hundred of the Holy City’s inhabitants following them.

  By the time the stormtroopers realized they were heading to the spaceport, there were almost five hundred of them, and by then, it was far too late.

  The biggest problem, it turned out, hadn’t been how to get ahold of a ship, or whom they could find to fly the ship, or where they would take the ship, or who might join them on the journey.

  The biggest problem, it turned out, was how to get the children on the ship in the first place.

  It had been Beezer Fortuna who supplied the intelligence about the Sentinel shuttle. There was, he said, a regular run every third day of the week that brought command staff to Jedha. Their only cargo was the occasional piece of specialized mining equipment and replacement parts for the crystal matrix evaluators that were used to check the integrity of the kyber crystals. While the cargo was unloaded and distributed, the officers aboard would disembark to make inspection of the operation on Jedha. They would visit each of the LZs and command posts in turn, review the stormtroopers, and finally venture out of the Holy City—accompanied by heavily armed escort—to see firsthand the operation at each of the kyber mines. The visit, according to Fortuna, normally took between four and six hours, depending on what difficulties the inspecting officers might discover. More crucially, however, was the fact that the Sentinel didn’t come down from the Star Destroyer overhead, but rather arrived from somewhere out of system. Beezer didn’t know from where.